Announcing YC’s Work at a Startup

Note: Join us in person at the Work at a Startup Expo on July 28, which was also announced today. YC startups will be presenting, and they are hiring at all levels — from junior engineers to VP of Engineering.

Work at a Startup is like a common application for engineers to apply to many YC companies simultaneously. About 400 YC companies are currently hiring engineers. If you’re an engineer looking for the right company, that’s a pretty overwhelming number to sort through and write cover letters for. With Work at a Startup, engineers fill out one application, and interested companies will just reach out to them. They can also browse a list of all companies hiring for roles that fit their interests.

We’ve soft launched the site within the YC and Hacker News communities, and initial signs are promising. Over 3,000 engineers have filled out an application, and most of them have started conversations with a YC company. More than 80% of YC companies that are hiring engineers are using it actively. We have companies hiring in 19 countries and companies hiring for some unique roles, like a robotics engineer to build autonomous tractors and a backend developer in Ghana to build a commodities exchange.

We’re also working to make the matching process intelligent. This is a very hard problem, but we’ve made some initial progress. For example, if you need a visa to work in the US, you’ll only get matched with companies that sponsor visas. If you’re a new college graduate, you’ll only get matched with companies that are hiring new graduates.

Also, we’ve tried to go one level beyond that and start to model the reasons why people would prefer one company over another. We ask questions like: what motivates you more: “solving hard technical problems” or “building great products and having business impact”? We’ll use those answers to give you a first indication of whether a company is a fit.

For now, Work at a Startup is specifically for software engineers (including data scientists and devops). We started with that just because we wanted to stay focused and get it working really well for one category before we expand. Once we’re ready, we’ll add support for the dozens of roles YC companies are hiring for.

If you’re interested in joining a startup, we hope to see you at our July 28th Work at a Startup Expo, and if you can’t attend in person, we hope you’ll create a profile at workatastartup.com to start engaging with YC founders. We’d love to hear your feedback at workatastartup@ycombinator.com.